One night, beneath a pale moon, a circle of young clan brothers sat gathered around the fire. Their youngest, Jiyun, plucked a simple tune on a battered lute, nimble fingers coaxing joy from worn strings. The others answered with drunken dances and slurred lyrics, their laughter rising like smoke in coarse waves. Cups of stolen wine clashed together, voices shouted half-remembered verses, and scraps of venison crackled over the flames — meager, yet shared as if it were a feast.

Among them stood one apart: Jianyu, the Pride of his Father. Strong, loyal, unyielding — both shield and spear to his brothers — he was beloved beyond measure. Yet Jianyu was not born of the blade. He had been found, abandoned in a plundered village, a wailing infant wrapped in rags. The head of Xuè Rèn, Shan Hu, had taken pity and brought the child back to camp. Unexpectedly, it was Shan Hu’s wife, Zhenya, who cradled the boy to her breast and raised him as her own.

Shan Hu, at first, could not have cared less about the abandoned infant.
“Zhenya,” he grumbled, his deep voice rough as gravel, “let one of the other women tend to him. We already have sons , one nearly grown, preparing to take a wife of his own. Why start over now?”
Her eyes flashed as she cradled the wailing child. “I didn’t know you were the boss of me,” she said with a gentle snarl, arms closing protectively around the boy.
Shan Hu blinked, then let out a low laugh from his barrel chest. “Yes, my love,” he surrendered without a fight — and the matter was settled.

Years later, Shan Hu took notice of the boy again. Jianyu was no longer swaddled in rags but lean and strong, though still young. He struggled, sweat dripping from his brow, as he tried to raise a long sword twice his size. His arms trembled; his knees buckled — but his eyes burned with resolve.
“Hmm…” Shan Hu rumbled, stroking the length of his chest-beard, broad shoulders hunched as he studied the boy.
Finally, he growled, “Come, boy.”

The child, startled by the rumble of his adoptive father’s voice, crept toward him.
“Yes, Ba?” he asked, tilting his head so far back it seemed Shan Hu’s height reached the heavens themselves.

With one swift motion, Shan Hu scooped him into his massive arms. It was the first time since infancy that the mountain of a man had held the boy. He carried him to a weapons rack and set a pair of daggers into the child’s hands. They fit perfectly, as though forged for him alone.
“Master this,” Shan Hu growled.

When the boy’s feet touched earth again, his eyes burned like twin flames. “Yes, Ba!” he shouted before darting into the forest with reckless joy.

For weeks, his shadow was scarcely seen. At dawn he slipped past his clan brothers, ignoring their laughter and warnings not to run with blades unsheathed. The forest swallowed him whole, only spitting him back at dusk, dirt-caked and grinning.

One evening, Shan Hu’s eldest son, Húlí, squinted at the boy racing past. “Ba,” he said, “what’s gotten into the runt?”
Shan Hu only rumbled deep in his chest. Zhenya’s sharp eyes cut toward him — she had not seen hide nor hair of her boy all day — and Shan Hu wisely left the question unanswered. He rose from the table and walked off into the twilight, beard twitching with the ghost of a smile.

Days later, when the boy finally returned, he carried a sack heavy with the spoils of his hunt. His daggers were nicked and dulled from endless practice, edges worn but spirit sharpened. Shan Hu stood waiting.
The child dropped to his knees, offering the blades in both hands. “Ba,” he panted, “I’ve mastered them.”

For a long moment Shan Hu said nothing. His gaze lingered, unreadable, until at last it softened. Slowly, he laid one great hand upon the boy’s head.
“Then you are no longer nameless,” Shan Hu declared. “From this day forward, you are Jianyu —strong as steel, and precious as the stone that endures.”

As he spoke, Jianyu’s two elder brothers came to stand at their father’s side, shoulder to shoulder, pride in the boy plain as firelight.
The child’s chest swelled. “Jianyu,” he whispered, tasting the name as if it were the sweetest thing he had ever known.
And in that moment, a new son of Xuè Rèn was truly born.

I wonder what that sticky stuff was growing on the trees…

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